Specifying and generating multilanguage software development environments

Integrated software environments use a project information base (PIB) as a repository of all project-related data. A software environment supporting a lifecycle methodology requires a multilanguage PIB, with component languages dedicated to various aspects and phases of project development. At the same time, one has to view a PIB as a database (or even a knowledge base), where project information is stored, and from which it may be queried using database methods. Therefore, a model for PIBs should equally address linguistic and database aspects of the project information representation. The goal of the paper is to introduce a formal model for multilanguage environments, suitable for representing PIBs. It builds the model by extending attribute grammars and integrating them with the entity-relationship model. It also studies basic properties of the formalism, formulates conditions to be obeyed by well formed specifications and describes an implementation